Coco Schumann, Jewish German Jazz Legend Forced To Play For Nazis, DiesGetty
Coco Schumann in 2007.
Heinz Jakob “Coco” Schumann, a Jewish-German jazz legend who survived the Holocaust by playing for Nazis, is dead at 93, the BBC reported.
Schumann, born to Jewish parents, fell in love with jazz swing music while living in Berlin in the 1930s. His first girlfriend, who was French, gave him the nickname Coco because it was easier for her to pronounce than Jakob.
Schumann was arrested in 1943 and sent to Theresienstadt, a concentration camp in German-occupied Czechoslovakia. There, Schumann was forced to play for Nazi officers in a band called the Ghetto Swingers.
“We played music in hell,” Schumann later said of the experience.
Schumann was later sent to Auschwitz, where he survived a death march forced on the camp’s prisoners ahead of the arrival of Allied soldiers.
Schumann later returned to Germany and became one of the country’s best known jazz musicians, and one of the first major German electric guitarists. His autobiography, “The Ghetto Swinger,” was eventually turned into a musical staged in Hamburg.Contact Ari Feldman at feldman@forward.com or on Twitter @aefeldman

PLEASE NOTE: IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO BE ON THIS MAILING LIST PLEASE RESPOND WITH 'REMOVE' IN THE SUBJECT LINE. IF YOU ARE RECEIVING DUPLICATE EMAILS OUR APOLOGIES, JAZZ PROMO SERVICES ANNOUNCEMENT LIST IS GROWING LARGER EVERY DAY.....PLEASE LET US KNOW AND WE WILL FIX IT IMMEDIATELY!

Client Campaigns by Year

Client Comments

Jim Eigo’s Jazz Promo Service is my lifeline to the jazz world of New York and beyond, and the source of so many of my happiest musical discoveries and most joyful nights of jazz. Jim is the hardest-working jazz publicist I know; his popularity speaks for itself.

James Gavin, journalist and author of Deep in a Dream: The Long Night of Chet Baker